MICHEL’S LAWYERS PLAN­NING TO MOVE ICJ AGAINST EX­TRA­DI­TION

Michel’s team is seek­ing to con­vince the Bri­tish gov­ern­ment and the me­dia that in spite of not be­ing guilty, as the Ital­ian court judge­ment shows, he was ex­tra­dited, which was il­le­gal.

In order to prove his ex­tra­di­tion il­le­gal, Michel’s de­fence team is re­ly­ing on the ar­gu­ment that he was sent to In­dia be­cause of the “good re­la­tion­ship Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi en­joys with the UAE gov­ern­ment”.

Gov­ern­ment of In­dia is likely to ac­cept the Bri­tish gov­ern­ment’s re­quest of pro­vid­ing con­sular ac­cess to Michel. This was re­quested by the Bri­tish of­fi­cials as soon as Michel landed in In­dia on Mon­day night. Michel’s ex­tra­di­tion is likely to im­pact the case of fugi­tive busi­ness­man Vi­jay Mallya, who has taken shel­ter in the UK, while fight­ing off his ex­tra­di­tion to In­dia.

Sources added that the ex­tra­di­tion of Mallya, apart from rest­ing on the judge­ment of the Bri­tish court, greatly de­pends on the “at­ti­tude” of the Bri­tish gov­ern­ment to­wards the mat­ter.

“If the Bri­tish me­dia is con­vinced that Michel was ex­tra­dited il­le­gally, their gov­ern­ment will come un­der a lot of pres­sure not to ex­tra­dite Mallya and adopt a hos­tile ap­proach in this case,” an of­fi­cial source said. Whether this will have any ef­fect on the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia is an open ques­tion.